Data Mining

At NTEN's 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference last week, four fundraising professionals discussed social data and what nonprofits should do with it, including how the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and CARE leverage their social data.

At NTEN's 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference Thursday, four fundraising professionals discussed social data and what nonprofits should do with it, including how the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and CARE leverage their social data.

If you are a nonprofit, I really need you to click on this link and take this 10-question survey. Five minutes — TOPS — trust me!!  And, I don't even ask for your name or your organization name.

Welcome to Part 2 of yesterday's post. Modeling: The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know what the experts were thinking — so I decided to just ask! For the most part, what is in this article are direct comments/quotes from the folks that I believe are the brightest and the best in our industry around this topic.

The costume department at FundRaising Success has gone all out to bring you today's installment. Jo, er ... Alex Trebek puts Integral's Jim Emlet and Kevin Moran through their paces with a quick bonus round of Data Jeopardy. No wonder the score is 0 - 0; no one seems to know how to answer in the form of a question!

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know what the experts were thinking in this area — so I decided to just ask! For the most part, what is in this article are direct comments/quotes from the folks that I believe are the brightest and the best in our industry around this topic.

In the September/October 2004 issue, fundraising pros Bryan Terpstra and Maura Szendey teamed up to write "Don't Be Afraid of the A-Word," a feature that put fundraisers' minds at ease by explaining that, unlike the tax variety, creative and file audits can be stress-free and a good way to up your bottom line.

As with every evolutionary process, it's time to go to the next stage — moving from focusing on all the data to focusing on the right data. That's where the confusion comes in — what exactly is the right data to measure?

When I was being trained as a journalist, I was taught that the who, what, when, where, why and how were the ingredients in a good lede. They are also the ingredients in good fundraising decision making. Dig a bit deeper — things are not always what they seem. 

Mitt Romney's success in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in the costliest presidential race ever can be traced in part to a data-mining project that sifts through Americans' personal information — including their purchasing history and church attendance — to identify new and likely wealthy donors, the Associated Press has learned.